SETIcon!

Join us at SETIcon this August in Santa Clara, CA for a full weekend of programs and parties. Meet the Are We Alone? team in person! Visit the SETIcon website for more information and to buy your tickets.

Seth's Latest Book!

Click the title above to purchase the book from Amazon.com and the SETI Institute will get a percentage of your total purchase (so buy like 50 copies).

Confessions of an Alien HunterAliens are big in America. Whether they’ve arrived via rocket, flying saucer, or plain old teleportation, they’ve been invading, infiltrating, or inspiring us for decades, and they’ve fascinated moviegoers and television watchers for more than fifty years.

Seth’s new book, Confessions of An Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (National Geographic Books) offers an entertaining and expert account of the facts, fantasies, and future of finding intelligence elsewhere in the universe, and how real science differs from the Hollywood view of extraterrestrial life.

Seth on the Radio!Okay, since he hosts Are We Alone? every week, that's perhaps not so novel, but here are a couple of Seth's recent appearances on other radio programs:

Seth on TV

Seth on Fora.tv, a website focusing on people, issues, and ideas changing the world. (April 2009)

It Came From Seth's Brain!

When Seth isn't hosting Are We Alone? he's kept locked away in a sensory deprivation chamber where electrodes hooked up to his brain extract ideas that are developed by robotic chimps into "essays". Compiled here are just a few of his writings, as well as this popular item from his film making past:

Check out more of Seth's ruminations and even some serious science on his publications list.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Confessions of a Spore Addict

An overview of Spore from the game's creators

As you'll hear in this week's show, "Got Life?", Seth and Molly gave me a copy of Spore to play so that we could get a better understanding of the game. Well, a few hours turned into a week, and a cell turned into a galactic empire, just as the game's creators promised. I actually decided to start over as an herbivore, and made it through each phase as a friendly, diplomatic species, who are currently under attack by the Wirbleflubby, a species from a nearby star system whose requests for communication I accidentally ignored. Oops.

I also ran a carnivore through the first 3 phases, eating and destroying everything I could. They're about to start the Civilization phase, which should be interesting, as they're anything but civilized. In another game, I ran a carnivore through the first three phases as a friendly diplomat. Getting through the creature phase without killing anything was hard because I could only eat corpses. Fruit bad, corpses good. Go figure. In yet another game (yes, even eating and sleeping were annoying interruptions last week) I found the rare omnivore mouth type during the cell phase, and I'm working on getting through the Tribal stage both hunting and gathering.

If anyone has any questions about Spore, I'm the most likely one here to have answers. And if you know how to win over the Wirbleflubby without selling all my artifacts, please let me know!